European Union
Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2011 6:06 am
Four decades of dodging the big question on joining the European Union By Glen Owen
Last updated at 11:26 PM on 1st October 2011
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1Zb65etzY
It has been nearly four decades since the voice of the British people was last heard on Europe, when the pro-Common Market lobby won a 67 per cent majority in the 1975 referendum, two years after Edward Heath had taken us into Europe.
But as the binds with Brussels have grown tighter, through a series of treaties voted through the Commons, anti-integration campaigners have kept up relentless pressure for a fresh vote.
When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, she famously demanded a rebate on the UK’s contributions to the EU budget, which she secured five years later. But it was Labour that called for our withdrawal from the EEC in its doomed 1983 Election manifesto.
In 1987, despite her instinctive Euroscepticism, Thatcher signed the Single European Act: its creation of an internal market and deepening of integration was the biggest loss of British sovereignty since Heath signed the Treaty of Rome.
In 1992, John Major triggered turmoil in the Tory Party by signing the Maastricht Treaty, which created the European Union and laid the ground for a single currency. Major secured a British opt-out from the euro, and promised we would not join the currency without a direct mandate from voters.
A hard core of 22 rebels refused to support Major in a series of Commons votes at a time when his majority was just 18. The knife-edge votes came close to bringing down the Major administration, but at no stage was a referendum voted on in the Commons.
The Tory turmoil over the issue contributed to a landslide for the pro-single currency Tony Blair.
Many Conservative voters defected to UKIP, which wants the country to withdraw from the EU, and the late James Goldsmith’s now-defunct Referendum Party, which called for a popular vote on the UK’s links with Europe.
The euro was introduced on January 1, 2002: Blair privately mooted holding a referendum on the issue on May 1, 2003, but he was blocked by Chancellor Gordon Brown who insisted that five key economic tests had to be passed before the option was put to the people. He declared that they had not been met.
The Lisbon Treaty, signed in 2007, advanced the federalist agenda even further, giving Brussels more power over the 27 member states. Brown, now Prime Minister, refused to call a referendum on the treaty despite Blair’s earlier promise to do so.
In September 2007, Opposition leader David Cameron promised: ‘Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM, a Conservative government will hold a referendum’ on Lisbon.
Two years later, to the fury of his party’s Right-wingers, he dropped the pledge. The economic problems engulfing the eurozone have revitalised the anti-Brussels agenda.
As Germany and France struggle to raise the funds to prevent weaker members of the EU from going bust, more then 120 Tory MPs have formed a group pushing Cameron to set out a ‘clear plan’ for pulling back from the EU.
They are expected to be joined in the forthcoming Commons debate by at least 50 Labour MPs opposed to integration, and even a handful of Lib Dems, traditionally the most Euro-friendly party.